Independent developer Mutable Realms announced today that Wish, its upcoming UMMORPG (Ultra Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), is about to enter the beta testing phase. This stage will last until February 2004, and the company hopes to reach 20,000 users by that time.

What makes Wish different is that it has what the company calls a "highly-scalable server cluster infrastructure." In plain language, that translates to thousands of players interacting in one large world, instead of a few hundred players confined to each separate server.

Wish will be released in North America in the fourth quarter of 2004. Mutable Realms has not announced any intentions for international releases.